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In the middle of doing press for CO$T OF LIVING, QUALITY OF LIFE and I had to sit down and answer some questions… thought it would be fun to share. Gives a little more background on the show, how we think, and why we are still doing what we are doing.

Are these new works or revamped older pieces?

We started this show in 2005, with the intention of it being the second RawMoves show after Caught in the Act. We were working with a small cast of six that included ourselves as dancers AND choreographers. We worked for about 10 months, only to have one dancer break a foot and another dancer move out of town. Because of these events, the 10 months of work were never finished and have been sitting on old DV tapes for years.

Some of RawMoves’ most popular and famous dances were always envisioned as a part of this evening length work: Table for Four was shown at our first-ever RawMoves performance and House of Timothy and Tea Party at the Morgue, created while Tosha was at the U of U, has won national awards and recognition. We always wanted to take the basic ideas of these dances: everyday objects and scenes that we live with every day, and show them on stage. A table and chairs, a couch and lamp, a family sitting down to dinner – these were all images that we have gone back to over and over again to create this evening length work. But the original ideas are from years ago.

How do you think this performance specifically “strives for honesty and realism by present the ‘RAW’ elements of our lives today?”

When we started to create this evening, we knew we had to draw on our own lives to give it honesty and realism. Both Natosha and I have gone through some major upheaval in our own family lives and have had to come to terms with a new definition of what ‘family’ means. We have drawn on our ideas, feelings, and experiences in the creative process to make sure that everything you see is linked in some way to a real experience. The audience may not get our ‘exact’ jumping off point – but that has never been important to us. What the audience will get is a sense that each section and the whole evening has a reality and a narrative that it wouldn’t have otherwise.

In addition to having real emotions and experiences in mind while creating and crafting this show, we spend hours and hours of rehearsal talking with the dancers about how to make each movement deliberate and honest. The dancers have been working for weeks to create a reality for themselves that they can draw on each time they dance and perform. We have been working to strip away artifice, acting, and performance, in the hopes that we are left with honest, real, meaningful humans who are dancing and moving in front of us.

With how busy you two are, why is it important for you to continue to have RawMoves as a creative outlet?

We know we’ve tapped into something valuable when, time after time, people make the remark that they had given up on modern dance but, after seeing our shows, they are given hope again. They really felt something; they understood and ‘got’ what we were talking about.

It’s important to us to have art that reflects our everyday lives. We value dance that takes our everyday world and turns it on its head. We look for, and want to see, dance/art that reflects the state of our world, the way we feel, and the way we relate to our world. Even now, in this city, it’s still hard to find art that isn’t about escape or entertainment. We feel that the best way to support art that does these things is to produce it.